{"id":2699354,"date":"2026-11-05T16:20:34","date_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignexclusive-doj-stops-race-based-funding-for-federal-student-aid\/"},"modified":"2026-11-05T16:33:47","modified_gmt":"2026-11-05T21:33:47","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignexclusive-doj-stops-race-based-funding-for-federal-student-aid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignexclusive-doj-stops-race-based-funding-for-federal-student-aid\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: DOJ Stops Race-Based Funding For Fed Student Aid"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">18<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignexclusive-doj-stops-race-based-funding-for-federal-student-aid%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2699354&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The Justice Department issued an opinion saying federal education aid cannot be tied to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/hegseth-orders-merit-based-admissions-at-military-academies\/\" title=\"Heg...h Orders Merit-Based Admissions At Military Academies\">race-based goals<\/a> like changing schools\u2019 racial makeup. It targets the Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP),arguing grants prioritize race over academic need adn therefore trigger strict scrutiny &#8211; a test most programs cannot meet.The opinion cites grants aimed at reducing Hispanic or Black isolation and references recent Supreme Court rulings opposing explicit racial classifications. DOJ says race-conscious funding is permissible only narrowly to remedy illegal discrimination, and many voluntary desegregation plans likely would fail under strict scrutiny.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The Department of Justice issued a legal opinion Thursday officially stating that federal education aid cannot be tied to race-based initiatives, such as increasing racial diversity or artificially altering racial balance.<\/p>\n<p>The slip <a href=\"https:\/\/www.justice.gov\/olc\/media\/1470461\/dl\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">opinion<\/a>, obtained by The Federalist, addresses specifically the Department of Education\u2019s Magnet Schools Assistance Program (MSAP), which the Department of Justice says \u201cfacially classifies by race and is motivated by the racially discriminatory purpose of changing the racial composition of K\u201312 schools.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The MSAP was created by Congress to support magnet schools, allowing the secretary of education to give local agencies funding for the schools. The program has awarded hundreds of millions of dollars toward this end, and the Department of Justice recognizes that magnet schools \u201cprovide meaningful opportunities for school choice, and foster academic excellence and innovation within the public school system.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, the program has an underlying obsession with race, according to the opinion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNotwithstanding magnet schools\u2019 important contributions to public education, MSAP grants are not primarily focused on promoting academic excellence. Their purpose \u2018is to assist in the desegregation of schools,\u2019\u201d the opinion reads. \u201cThe statutory and regulatory scheme thus requires the Secretary to prioritize race when awarding funds. The consequence is that the MSAP scheme does not allow the Secretary to allocate program funds to any public school based on educational need or school quality. Funds instead go to magnet schools based on their racial compositions for the purpose of changing their racial mix.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The opinion states that MSAP \u201ctriggers strict scrutiny,\u201d which is the most stringent standard for judicial review of the constitutionality of government action. The program is so fundamentally focused on race, according to the DOJ, that \u201csome MSAP grants could theoretically satisfy strict scrutiny\u2019s exacting standards, although we are not aware of any specific grant that currently does so.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a huge win for qualified American students legitimately needing student aid as well as for American taxpayers,\u201d a Justice Department official told The Federalist. \u201cIt\u2019s a big blow to the DEI movement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>During the civil rights era and school desegregation, the paradigm was such that schools could be subject to court-ordered desegregation plans. MSAP was created with the \u201coverarching purpose\u201d to \u201cassist in the desegregation of schools\u201d and \u201cpromote diversity.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The parameters for program eligibility are also explicitly racial, and require that participating organizations are \u201cpart of an approved desegregation plan\u201d that is \u201cdesigned to bring students from different social, economic, ethnic, and racial backgrounds together.\u201d Right now, there are 60 active MSAP grants across school districts in 18 states, 52 of which are implementing voluntary plans, and eight of which are implementing court-ordered plans.<\/p>\n<p>However, as the opinion noted, the U.S. Supreme Court has made recent rulings on the unconstitutionality of such explicit racial plans in both <em>Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard<\/em> and <em>Louisiana v. Callais<\/em>. \u201cThe Supreme Court explained that \u2018[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality,&#8217;\u201d the opinion states, quoting <em>Callais<\/em>, which itself quoted <em>SFFA<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>The opinion pointed to a 2017 $10,121,928 grant to Napa Valley Unified School District (NVUSD), which set a goal of \u201creducing supposed Hispanic\/Latino isolation by \u2018at least 2 percentage points per year.\u2019\u201d In 2023 the Department of Education issued a $14,981,002 grant to Ypsilanti Community Schools (YCS) for transitioning four schools to magnet schools. YCS proposed a marketing strategy for recruitment to achieve its \u201cracial balances\u201d and eliminate \u201cBlack student isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The opinion notes that \u201cminority groups,\u201d as defined by Congress, consist of \u201cfour discrete racial or ethnic groupings,\u201d none of which are white. \u201cSchools with an acceptable mix of races (whatever that means) are thus disadvantaged or entirely precluded from accessing grant funds,\u201d the opinion states. \u201cAnd schools with isolated majority races are likewise disadvantaged.<\/p>\n<p>The program was enacted by Congress with a \u201cdiscriminatory purpose,\u201d the opinion states. <\/p>\n<p>The opinion encourages potential detractors to consider a parallel program that awarded funds to schools seeking to isolate students based on race and achieve racial homogneity. \u201cA grant recipient cannot set race-based admissions quotas. But to receive funds, they must engage in race-conscious strategies \u2014 such as selective marketing and strategic school placements \u2014 to maximize racial isolation. Few would argue that a program like that should be subjected to anything less than strict scrutiny.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The Constitution would only allow the secretary of education to apply race-based awards of the program in specific, narrow instances for the purposes of \u201cremediating \u2026 illegal discrimination,\u201d the slip opinion says. But the opinion also notes that applying strict scrutiny is \u201cautomatically fatal\u201d for a majority of programs that involve racial considerations, and while MSAP is not necessarily unconstitutional as a whole, its entire functionality as currently practiced is.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cGiven the progress that the United States has made toward remediating illegal discrimination in K\u201312 education, it may prove difficult for a voluntary desegregation plan today to establish the factual predicates needed to survive strict scrutiny,\u201d the opinion concludes. \u201c'[T]hat is cause for celebration.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Breccan F. Thies is the White House correspondent for The Federalist. He is a co-recipient of the 2025 Dao Prize for Excellence in Investigative Journalism. As an investigative journalist, he previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>DOJ: fed education funds can&#8217;t be race-based; MSAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":179,"featured_media":2699355,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/pexels-max-fischer-5211446.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[7076,35136,87529,87528],"class_list":["post-2699354","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-doj","tag-education-policy","tag-federal-student-aid","tag-race-based-funding"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/pexels-max-fischer-5211446.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699354","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/179"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2699354"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699354\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2699361,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2699354\/revisions\/2699361"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2699355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2699354"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2699354"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2699354"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}